Project Spectrum April - Dye!

So on the Friday that I had off a few weeks ago while I was waiting for the paint in my hallway to dry I dyed some yarn…. I used oranges and yellows for project spectrum April! Somehow I forgot to blog about it… and I have yet to take pictures of my vacation knitting... so I'll blog about dying now! so here’s what I did.

The yarn is Patons Classic Merino in whatever their neutral color is. I bought it on sale at Catans awhile ago (who can resist wool on sale?) It comes in skeins so I wound it into a nice hank over the backs of 2 chairs. If you do this, though I highly recommend that you NOT use a chair with wheels on it. Oops.


Then I soaked it in a pyrex filled with warm water and a couple good glugs of white vinegar. I’m not sure how long it soaked for – as long as it took me to prepare the kool-aid!


Then I set up kool-aid colors… I used 2-ish packets per cup of water… and the colors I used were lemonade/lemonade, lemonade/orange, orange/orange, orange/blackcherry (only used ½ the packet of black cherry), & lemonade/black cherry (only a few drops of it, though!). So I had a nice range of yellows and oranges….



Then I laid out the pre-soaked yarn on saran wrap… and painted it section by section with a turkey baster (first time I ever used that kitchen tool! Wonder why I even have a turkey baster!) I ended up striping it in a nice gradient of colors:

Then I wrapped it up in the saran wrap, put it back in the pyrex, and nuked it. It went into the microwave in 2 min. increments… cook on high for 2 min… wait for 2 min… high for 2 min… wait for 2 min… high for 2 min… wait for awhile.


Then I carefully unwrapped it, dumped it in the sink, and ran water over it… I started with hot water and gradually made it cooler.

And that’s it! dyed yarn! So much fun.

I got a little overzealous with my striping though – I had intended for a nice, semi-uniform but still a little varied orange... not the rainbow of orange I had made… plus I still had quite a bit of kool-aid left… and some yarn… so I dyed another skein. For this one I did the same thing I just was less careful with everything… Here’s what it looks like with the green I want to add to it in felted bag form:


Dying is seriously addicting. And I’ve only dabbled in kool-aid….

So what should I make with the stripy yarn?